Write with Us this September

The Writers’ Knot is welcoming new members! This is the global creative community where where the mythic imagination meets creative expression.

Registration is now open and due to the intimate nature of this community, space is extremely limited: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

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This week, a ‘best of the podcast episode’: Achtan: A Brave Mother’s Tale.

Our guest Karina Tynan, psychotherapist and Irish mythology author, tells a story of sovereignty, or spellwork, and of our deepest entanglement with nature. Bees, wolves, and horses play a magical role in the tale of Achtan and the lengths she went to protect her infant son, the future king, Cormac, son of Airt.

In the conversation that follows we explore:

✨Mothering and parenting - both in the ancient times we imagine and in this difficult contemporary moment

✨Our need for magic, and the way we know that magic when we meet it

✨The way Karina blends her imagination and personal experience into all her mythological retellings

✨Sacrifice (whose roots mean “to make sacred”) particularly, when it comes to parenthood

✨Achtan is a druid’s daughter, and Karina imagines the details of the five spells of protection are woven around Cormac Mac Airt in the literature

✨Our fear of our own children’s fragility, including fears of giving our kids an eating disorder or pushing them to suicide

✨The importance of coming of age rituals in indigenous cultures and the lost value of adventure.

✨The role of rhythmic stories, fairy tale, adventure, and romances in the development of children

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups

Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Write with Us this September

The Writers’ Knot is welcoming new members! This is the global creative community where where the mythic imagination meets creative expression.

Registration is now open and due to the intimate nature of this community, space is extremely limited: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine

Our Story

The sea has its own way of speaking - not in words, but tides, dreams, and memory. Not all who feel lost are meant to be found; some of us are simply remembering where we came from.

Erica O'Reilly's The Call of the Sea and a Lost Sealskin emerged when she returned to Ottawa, after two weeks at an artists' residency on the coast of Kerry. In this piece, she explores the layered, cascading grief of returning to a land that doesn’t feel of “home.”

This piece was first as part of her Substack series The Creative Process of De thír mo Mháithreacha: Of the Land of My Mothers. Be sure to subscribe to her amazing newsletter, Weavings of the Wise & Embodied.

Our Guest

As KnotWork’s 2025 resident storyteller, Erica’s heart-centered work is devoted to facilitating experiences where souls feel seen, held, and heard.

Through her Into the Circle Theatre project, Erica weaves together Irish culture, history, folklore, and mythology.

As an Irish-Canadian, Erica is profoundly grateful to the traditional spirits and keepers of the land—past, present, and future—of the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation where she was born and currently resides.

In this episode:

• Diasporic grief and what it is to feel at home in two worlds
• The selkie myth, that classic tale from Irish mythology of the seal woman who is torn between land and sea
• Creative residencies: making plans vs. letting go of expectations
• Storytelling is medicine and sharing stories out loud matters
• What it means to live between worlds and living the question: do you have to choose?
• Planting seeds in the water, hoping for future adventures and new stories together

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups

Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Write with Us this September

The Writers’ Knot is welcoming new members! This is the global creative community where where the mythic imagination meets creative expression.

Registration is now open and due to the intimate nature of this community, space is extremely limited: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine

You can also dive deeper into the stories behind the stories in this episode with the latest post about the immram tradition and what makes a good story.

In This Episode

In this solo episode, Marisa Goudy explores the art of truly “arriving” through the lens of her recent journey to Ireland, blending personal storytelling with Irish mythic tradition.

Inspired by the ancient immram tales—sea journeys to the otherworld—Marisa reflects on how travel, memory, and landscape shape our sense of self and belonging. Rather than a simple travelogue, the episode weaves together 17 moments of arrival at the Bard Mythologies Summer School on Clare Island, each representing a different facet of presence, transformation, and connection.

Along the way, Marisa draws parallels between her experiences and Irish mythology (including the story of the voyage of Máel Dúin), considers the role of motherhood, grief, and friendship, and invites listeners to reflect on their own journeys and moments of arrival.

Also in this episode:

• Fiona Doris who gave us “Bid, the Unbiddable” S6 Ep4
• Tracy Chipman who joined us in S6 Ep19, had me on her show, “A Year and a Day” in an episode called The Poetry of Mothering
• Erica O’Reilly, our storyteller in residence who will join us next week with her own story of visiting Ireland this July
• Connecting with past KnotWork guests at the Bard Mythologies Summer School including: Treacy O’Connor, Mari Kennedy, Karina Tynan, and the founderes of the Bard, Ellen O’Malley Dunlop, and Sandy Dunlop.

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a...